Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Mowing The Line

There have been so many things in the
news recently that I wanted to write about. Unfortunately, I have
been warned time and time again (especially in the last few
weeks) that social and political bloggery could be interpreted a
certain way, and the upshot would amount to a one way ticket to
unemployment.

Since I happen to like my job, and I
especially like receiving a paycheck, I'm left with the topics of
dogs, cats, spiders, general stupidity, driving hazards, having a
teenager, and cicadas.

Speaking of cicadas, they peaked two
weeks ago. That photo of the bug-covered shed from my last post is
nothing compared to what it looked like when it peaked. And the
noise... ugh.

The brood hatched around 1 billion per
square mile, although I'm fairly certain that's just in my backyard
alone. I tried sucking up the corpses and shells with the lawn
tractor bagger thingy, and it didn't work very well. Once we got a
heavy storm, it knocked all the bug shells off the trees and other
vertical surfaces leaving me with piles of rotting, stinky bugs.

Speaking of. Since Hubby had been traveling, that was also the weekend I finally had to mow the lawn. The
grass had grown too tall to ignore, and Dog would sink. All I could
see were ears and tail.

Now, I was told how to operate the
mower/tractor about six years prior, but promptly forgot all of it. I
never used it, so my brain marked the information “inactive” and
locked it away, never to be found again.

Between Daughter and I, we got it
running. I started on one small patch. After making my first pass, I
realized nothing was happening. Cutting, I mean. Oh yeah. I probably
should drop the blade, right? Shut up.

So I dropped the blade. I did not
realize it had several levels - not just “up” and “down”. So
what did that mean? It means I dropped it all the way.

After going about ten feet I stopped to
check my progress and saw that I was basically tilling the earth. I
wasn't overly attached that patch of grass anyway, and it'll grow
back, right?

I played with the blade handle and
found a setting somewhere between “doing nothing” and “goodbye
grass”.

Peaches (the youngest, just turned 30) spent six years (partly because of switching schools) getting a technical architecture degree. Ended up with an OK, perhaps not great, job in NYC.

So she works for several years and decides the light is brighter with a masters. Gets herself in to Yale. Even with literally 10's of thousands from her parents, she still ends up with 10's of thousands of debt when she gets her masters in May. And now she is much smarter and unemployed.